Well, without the ups and downs, it's a flatline.

I do seem to be fairly blessed in my life, but that would take a fair amount of autobiography to explain.

Though consider the issue of time.

We are mobile organisms, so our sentience manifests as a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate, so we experience time as the present moving past to future, but the reality is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.

So there is no physical dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.

So energy is conserved, because it is this physical present, which means it goes past to future, while the patterns it generates go future to past. Energy drives the wave, while the fluctuations rise and fall.

Then consider that consciousness goes past to future, while the perceptions emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past. Though it's the heart and gut processing and circulating the energy driving us on, while the central nervous system sorts the information.

So I mostly let instinct drive my choices. It has been pretty successful, in terms of happiness, if not wealth, so I'm good with that.